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Election updates

Remember Minnesota where poor Amy Klobachar is trying to fill the the shoes of two Senators? The election may be coming to a close – finally. While Norm Coleman is going to appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court it doesn’t seem likely that they will overturn the results of the panel of judges that has been overseeing things. At this point, Al Franken’s lead is 312 votes.

This from Franken’s lawyer on April 7

At post-court press conference, lead Franken attorney Marc Elias commented that the election contest is essentially over, with Al Franken the winner after the court had 351 previously-rejected ballots counted, which boosted Franken’s lead from 225 votes to 312.

“Today is a very important step, as we now know the outcome of the election contest,” said Elias, “and that is the same outcome as the recount, which is that Al Franken has more votes than Norm Coleman.”

When asked whether he expected Coleman to appeal, Elias said: “That’s a question at this point for former Sen. Coleman. I guess I would say the same thing about his appeal as I said about his case: That the U.S. court system is a wonderful thing, as it’s open to people with non-meritorious claims.”

It really is time for Norm Coleman to hang it up.

In Illinois, there was no surpise in the 5th Congressional District. Michael Quigley, a Democrat, replaced Rahm Emanuel, another Democrat.

The other close election is in New York State’s 20th Congressional District. Politico’s Scorecard reports as of today

According to the latest unofficial combined machine and paper results released this afternoon, Democrat Scott Murphy has a 35-vote lead over Republican Jim Tedisco in New York’s 20th District.

The following counties have finished counting their domestic absentee ballots: Delaware, Essex, Greene, Otsego, and Rensselaer counties. No numbers have been reported to the state from Saratoga and Washington counties

The interesting thing about this is comparing the counties left to be counted and Nate Silver’s analysis. Washington County is heavily Democratic while Saratoga is Republican. Saratoga, however, had fewer absentee ballots.

One thing that seems fairly clear is that there tend to be a relatively higher proportion of absentee ballots returned in counties where Murphy performed well on election night. For example, Columbia County, where Murphy won 56.3 percent of the of the vote last week, accounted for 9.8 percent of ballots on election night, but accounts for 15.3 percent of absentees. Conversely, Saratoga County, which is a Tedisco stronghold, represented 36 percent of ballots on election night but only 27.2 percent of absentees:
…

If I simply apportion the absentee ballots based on the distribution of the election day vote in each county, I show Murphy gaining a net of 173 ballots during the absentee counting phase. In addition, as Michael Barone has noted, although a plurality of the absentee ballot returns are Republican, they are somewhat less Republican than registration in the district as a whole.

If Murphy hangs on, it looks like a trifecta for the Dems. Two holds and one gain.